{"id":2068,"date":"2025-06-21T10:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T10:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/2068\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T10:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T10:18:07","slug":"caitlin-clark-has-off-night-as-indiana-fever-lose-to-golden-state-valkyries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/2068\/","title":{"rendered":"Caitlin Clark has off night as Indiana Fever lose to Golden State Valkyries"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 The Indiana Fever<\/a> didn\u2019t have a lot of fight in them Thursday night.<\/p>\n

That could\u2019ve been for a multitude of reasons. They had just played a very physical game against Connecticut <\/a>two days earlier, and they traveled thousands of miles across three time zones to play at the Chase Center in San Francisco for the first time.<\/p>\n

The Fever had a winnable game in front of them. The Valkyries, an expansion franchise, were 5-6 and had five players out because of Eurobasket. It was one they could\u2019ve \u2014 and maybe should\u2019ve \u2014 won.<\/p>\n

But, to put it simply, they weren\u2019t aggressive enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were soft,\u201d Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell said. \u201cThey made us pay by just being stronger and being tougher. 50-50 balls, deflections, getting the passing lanes. That’s just a piece of just being aggressive and having an ability to, like, look at your best player, and be like, \u2018Nah, they gonna be aggressive.\u2019 And I think that we allowed it, kind of tucked our tail a little bit tonight, on the aggression side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Re-live Caitlin Clark\u2019s spectacular rookie season with our collector\u2019s book<\/a><\/p>\n

Indiana led for most of the first half against Golden State, despite a poor shooting night from its star Caitlin Clark<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clark only had two points in the first half, but the Fever still led by six going into halftime with 15 points from Aliyah Boston. That lead ballooned up to 13 points by the midway mark of the third quarter. And that\u2019s when the Fever got complacent.<\/p>\n

Golden State went on a 14-5 run to end the third quarter, then opened the fourth with another 9-2 run. With their sold-out crowd behind them, they had all the momentum and carried that to a comeback 88-77 win<\/a> over a team that was heralded as championship contenders at the beginning of the season.<\/p>\n

It was a stark contrast to Indiana\u2019s game just two days ago against Connecticut \u2014 Indiana led by as many as 20 points in the fourth quarter, and the Fever still pushed to a 17-point win.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, that fight disappeared.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we get these leads, we get up 10, we get up 12, and I thought that’s where we really grew versus Connecticut, we really took a step forward and kept our foot on the gas and built out our lead and got it up to 20,\u201d Clark said. \u201cI thought we were kind of in the phase of not (giving up those leads) anymore. And then we got our lead to 12 (against the Valkyries), and then we kind of go on a stretch of turning the ball over\u2026 We got to be able to grow in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clark, who averages 21.3 points per game, was held to 11 points on 3-of-13 shooting Thursday night. She also didn\u2019t make a 3-pointer (going 0-of-6 beyond the arc) for just the second time in her professional career.<\/p>\n

That led to a disjointed offense, as the Valkyries used Clark\u2019s off shooting night to their advantage. They didn\u2019t put as much emphasis on her in the second half, allowing them to space out their defense and penetrate passing lanes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indiana, in turn, stopped moving the ball as much as it usually does, and its offense became predictable. And the Valkyries never quit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about how this team is tough as nails right?\u201d acting head coach Austin Kelly said. \u201c… They never quit playing. It’s in the film. We didn’t do a great job of playing personnel, taking care of first things first at the point of attack \u2026 We didn’t bring it for whatever reason out of the locker room, and then that starts to build confidence (in Golden State) with teams clawing and chipping away at a lead. We got to be better in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a deflating loss to start a seven-day road trip across the West Coast. Indiana will head straight to Las Vegas from San Francisco for a game against the Aces on Sunday, then head up to Seattle to play the Storm on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The travel can be a lot, at times. But the constant focus on another game can also be a good thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t think we got much better tonight,\u201d Clark said. \u201dBut, you know, the good thing about this league is you play another game a couple days, so we’ll learn from this and get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chloe Peterson is the Indiana Fever beat reporter for IndyStar. Reach her at capeterson@gannett.com or follow her on X at\u00a0@chloepeterson67<\/a>. Get IndyStar’s Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark coverage sent directly to your inbox with our\u00a0Caitlin Clark Fever newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 The Indiana Fever didn\u2019t have a lot of fight in them Thursday night. That could\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1339,1582,2865,233,2866,2871,1369,1495,2870,2863,2473,2862,234,2867,1493,2868,942,50,450,950,1624,2750,62,1458,290,67,132,68,2864,232,2869,1707],"class_list":{"0":"post-2068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-caitlin","11":"tag-caitlin-clark","12":"tag-clark","13":"tag-college","14":"tag-college-sports","15":"tag-fever","16":"tag-francisco","17":"tag-golden","18":"tag-golden-state-valkyries","19":"tag-indiana","20":"tag-indiana-fever","21":"tag-kelsey","22":"tag-kelsey-mitchell","23":"tag-mitchell","24":"tag-neutral","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-overall","27":"tag-overall-neutral","28":"tag-san","29":"tag-san-francisco","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-sports-news","32":"tag-state","33":"tag-united-states","34":"tag-unitedstates","35":"tag-us","36":"tag-valkyries","37":"tag-wnba","38":"tag-womens","39":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114720846917842270","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}